Never underestimate Team Obama's ability to overdo anything

Considering Team Obama's behavior regarding the killing of Usama bin Laden, I can truly say, What a difference a decade makes.

In January 2002, as senior adviser to President George W. Bush, I told the Republican National Committee that "We can go to the country on this issue [prosecuting the war on terror] because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might." After the meeting, all hell broke loose.

House Democratic Minority Leader Dick Gephardt called my remarks "shameful." House Democratic Whip Nancy Pelosi implied that I might be attempting "to exploit terrorism as a political issue." Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe raged that my comments were "nothing short of despicable" and "an affront to the integrity of the entire United States military."

A few years later, in March 2004, the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign released its first ads. One of them, "Tested," began with the announcer saying "the last few years have tested America in many ways. Some challenges we've seen before. And some were like no others." During this last sentence, footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon appeared. The ads, including this one, were so inoffensive that FactCheck.org called them "downright bland." But once again, all hell broke loose.

Karl Rove is former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. A Fox News contributor and author of "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions, 2010). To continue reading his column on Team Obama and Bin Laden in The Wall Street Journal, click here.